Andrew F. Cooper is a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The Canadian discussion about the Pittsburgh Summit of G20 leaders followed in some of the same trajectory as the L’Aquila G8 debates, where some commentators lauded Canada’s performance and others located flaws and pitfalls. However, the partisan edge present during the G8 was far less evident. While early attention was given to Canada’s position on the G20’s core concerns, media coverage was quickly drawn to the announcement that the next G20 summit would be held in Canada.

Alongside the planned G8 Muskoka Summit of June 2010, Canada will now serve as co-host of a G20 Summit with South Korea. Once made public, the general tone of the media discussion shifted to one in which a number of writers tried seriously to engage in questions of institutional transformation, with an eye to seeking out what the implications could be for Canada. Overall, political and policy issues were concentrated on a functional basis while the question of who deserved the credit (or blame) for advancing (or rebuffing) the notion of the G20 vis-à-vis the G8 was treated more speculatively.

Public Engagement

The core economic concerns at the centre of the G20 agenda got heavy coverage in the run up to the summit. Canadian officials signalled that movement was being made on the bank capitalization issue, an item that had divided the position of the U.S. from some major European countries, most notably France and Germany, with the requirement for banks to have an appropriate ratio between money on hand to balance loans. Canadian officials also signalled that a compromise was being sought that linked bonuses to long-term performance of financial institutions, with remuneration being clawed back if and when bank profits suffered because of accentuated risk.

Where the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper devoted most of its attention was on getting the balance right between continuing the recession-fighting stimulus packages and implementing a collective exit strategy when the recovery was ensured. But the time was not yet right to move from the one stage to the next. “While we are seeing signs of recovery, the gains are at best fragile. We must stay on course,” Mr. Harper said. In a significant move of political outreach, Mr. Harper took this message to different constituencies, most notably to a pre-summit meeting with labour leader Ken Georgetti in which Harper said he had no intention of letting up on stimulus, and would urge other countries to stay the course. Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said in an interview that the prime minister “acknowledged that this crisis isn't over, and that government support will continue.”

Outside of the core concerns dominating the G20, Mr. Harper focused his attention on two other issues. The first target was the issue of Iranian nuclear aspirations. Following the public line adopted by US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Harper expressed Canada’s concern with the revelations that Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility for several years.

Yet Mr. Harper took a multilateral view, urging the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the facility, and called on Iranian authorities to co-operate with any forthcoming inspections. He went out of his way to label the question of whether Canada would support military air strikes as “highly speculative.”

The second issue related to the development agenda, a key focus for the planned G8 summit. Immediately prior to the G20 meeting, Mr. Harper announced that Canada would temporarily make $2.6 billion available to the African Development Bank, so that it could increase its lending base and improve financing conditions in Africa.

Public Focus

The Harper government acknowledged that not everything had been accomplished at the G20. One gap was on the standstill on protectionism. Another gap was on the overall level of commitments made by the G20 to the developing world. At the G20 PM Harper stated that “We haven't lived up to every commitment”, pointing to broad statements against protectionism. He added that the summit could have done more to reduce poverty and increase humanitarian assistance and infrastructure development.

That being said, Mr. Harper lauded the G20 substantive achievements as “historic”. He noted that a year ago, stock markets were falling at a precipitous rate and financial institutions were collapsing in ways not seen since the 1930s, and “now we are seeing signs of growth”. In his view, the G20 has worked well as a crisis committee. If it had not been possible, for the first time in history, to get the leaders of the major economies in one room together to put their minds to the collective interest of humanity and co-ordinate their policies, the result could have been very different.

At his post-summit press conference, Prime Minister Harper was far more effusive. Positioning Canada as a country with a strong banking system as well as other positive attributes, he stated that the Canadian role was that of a problem solver not as part of the problem: “We’re the one country in the room everybody would like to be.”

On the core issues faced by the G20, the Harper government received little criticism in the Canadian media. Rather, its weakness in the arena of climate change, and more generally on the connections of the G20 to environmental policy, was expounded. “I think there will be pressure on President Obama to deliver something at the G20 on financing climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries,” said Dale Marshall, a climate policy analyst for the David Suzuki Foundation. Mr. Harper was viewed by such critics as having tied Canada’s climate change plan to President Obama’s in an effort to arrive at a common North American initiative on greenhouse gas reduction, while neither country has been given credit for adopting a clear plan.

Debating the Future of the Gs

It is the future of the Gs, and especially the relationship between the G8 and the G20, that generated the most attention in the media. As noted, this debate was carried out in a serious fashion. In national leadership terms some kudos was allotted to former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin for his role as champion of the G20 – an idea at odds with orthodox thinking of the day. One article elaborated in some depth on this championship, in the context of the attacks made by then-opposition leader Stephen Harper in 2003, when he pronounced that Paul Martin's G20 served as an example of Canada’s “weak nation strategy.”

Other commentators, though, concentrated on Stephen Harper’s adaptive process in support of the G20. If not an original champion, he had become committed to the initiative. In Pittsburgh, he stated that G8 is “not a sufficient group [anymore] to deal with major economic and financial issues.” He went on to say that the G20, though a bit unwieldy, has proven its value since leaders first met last November in Washington at the height of the financial shocks.

In terms of Canada’s diplomatic status, the debate centered on whether or not Canada’s international role was strengthened or weakened by the accession of the G20 as the hub of global economic governance and the G8 concentrating on security issues. Mr. Harper acknowledged that Canada’s voice in the world on economic issues could become watered down. He explicitly stated: “Will Canada’s role and Canada’s voice be diluted [in the G20]? Well, look, it would be crazy for me to deny that in some degree. Obviously if you are one of 20 instead of one of eight it is a different dynamic.” What was not looked at in the Canadian media was whether Canada – along with other countries such as Japan and Italy – tried to block the move to institutionalize the G20 beyond a crisis committee. Nor was there any analysis about where Canada stood in the way of the reform of the International Monetary Fund, with a rebalancing in voting power and voice. 

The positive assessments concluded that Prime Minister Harper and the Canadian government were left with some considerable diplomatic strength even amidst this transformation. Canada as the co-host of the G20 with South Korea in June 2010 could reinforce its credentials as a country with solid diplomatic and economic strengths. But as the host of the Muskoka G8 Summit, Canada could not only shape the agenda in the way it wanted but do so in a way that reinforced the G8’s like-minded ethos. “They will be distinctive summits,” said Mr. Harper. “The G20 process has proven critical to our collective response to the global recession. This represents an unprecedented opportunity for Canada to demonstrate leadership as we continue our work on the economy and in defining the path forward.”

At the same time, however, Mr. Harper emphasized that the G8 will not disappear. While it will no longer be the premier body on economic issues, he noted that the G8 has taken an active role in other areas like development and international peace and security: “We view it important that these kinds of discussions continue.”